


Once Part of a Star

by Decepticonsensual



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: The figure known as the Necrobot walks the ancient starways alone, charting the life and death - and the sins - of every Cybertronian.  At the same time, he holds himself aloof from them, this race tainted by unending war.  What could he possibly have to learn from them?And then, one night, he encounters the sole survivor of a crash that should have left no one alive, and gets answers he never expected.(Spoilers through LL25.)





	Once Part of a Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scraplette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scraplette/gifts).

> A gift for TFN 2019.
> 
> This is a quasi-sequel to the final vignette in "And Mean It", for Scraplette, who requested something with Primus and Mortilus during their time as Rung and Censere.

_ For countless aeons, the Second who did not remember he was Second wandered the starlanes, and marked where they fell. _

_ Not the stars – though he had watched numerous stars being born in the dust clouds, emerging, and living, and dying – but the people. He saw where they took shape, in the warm embrace of their world’s living metal (and, later, in cold laboratories; how inventive these people were, how strange). He watched them live. And he watched them die. _

_ And when they had passed on, like stars spinning through his sector of space and then beyond, out of mortal sight, he marked them. _

_ He sometimes longed to speak with them, but held back. They all spoke, moved, flared, died, so fast (had it always been so fast?). And then, as the years went on, as he watched them slaughter one another, the urge to get to know them died, too. Instead, he began to cultivate his flowers, each one a beautiful accusation. Like he had become, they were mute witnesses to the atrocities of the Cybertronian race. _

_ He marked their deaths, and he marked their crimes, but he would not say a word to them. _

_ And then a single survivor changed that. _

***

An explosion. A ship, rocketing down in the night; a smear of bright fire against the glittering cold of space. Streaming fuel and flames, it crashed onto the surface of an uninhabited world and lay still.

Censere was near enough to the planet to watch the crash as it happened. Normally, after a disaster, he’d leave a few weeks to ensure that he had solitude to carry out his work, after any  survivors had pillaged the wreckage, collected their dead, and moved on. But there was little point in waiting here. Nothing could have survived that.

He landed and picked his way across a desolate plain, broken only by distant mountains and by the column of flame marking the location of the ship. As he neared it, Censere slowed, drawing his star-cloak close against the desert night.

He didn’t see the survivor at first. They were a dark smudge against the flames engulfing the dead ship, which the name painted on the hull – now half-singed away – confirmed to be the  _ Fateful Archetype.  _ The light from the fire blotted out any details of the mech’s frame, and they didn’t move. They were simply watching.

When Censere did spot them, he paused. The mech had unmistakably been involved in the crash; Censere could make out, now, that their arm was half-dislocated, and the injury looked fresh. And yet, how was that possible? How could so many aboard have died, and this one had walked away?

He knew he hadn’t made any sound, but the survivor suddenly turned towards him. Their optics were a vivid spot of blue in a darkness made all the more profound by the light of the fire.

“Are you here to take me with you?”

Censere’s mind whirled. He knew what the Cybertronians called him, and had heard scraps of rumours in his research – how could he not? But he’d never imagined that they believed…

“No,” he replied, startled into speaking. His voice felt rusty. “I don’t guide the dead. Even if I did, surely it isn’t your time yet.” None of the mech’s injuries appeared life-threatening.

Something dimmed in those bright optics. “Oh.”

Censere was drawn in, despite himself. “You aren’t relieved to have survived?”   
  


“I am. I just… well. For a moment – and I know it’s foolish – but for a moment I thought this might be my punishment, to watch them all die and to remain behind.”

“Punishment for what?”

“I wasn’t supposed to get attached, you see. My job was to observe, and analyse, and guide, and I was always told that… _sentiment…_ would get in the way of helping people.” His voice turned wistful. “But – how can you live among people, travel with them, watch them live and die, for millions of years, and never come to love any of them?” He smiled ruefully. “I suppose I’m not making any sense.”

“You’d be surprised,” Censere answered, surprising himself with his honesty. He drew forward, letting the light catch his features; closer than he’d let any Cybertronian see him since…

… he couldn’t remember, of course, but it troubled him that for a moment, he had  _ tried  _ to remember. Something about this survivor made those lost eons tickle at the back of his processor, as if they were in some way connected. As if, if he’d just come a little closer, sink a little deeper into those sad blue optics, all those years might come rushing back…

He shook himself. It was a foolish fancy. This was only an ordinary mech traumatised by what he’d just lived through, alone, needing someone to talk to.

  
And it was for that reason, in the end, that Censere found himself sitting down beside the mech. Censere nodded towards the wreck of the ship. He didn’t want to ask  _ what happened.  _ Time enough for that, from everyone, most likely, when the mech got back to his normal life. Instead, he  said, “Tell me about the people you lost.”

As the mech spoke, Censere watched raptly. There was something so warm, so expansive, in the way the survivor talked – and somewhere, just beyond sight, Censere thought he could sense the edges of a memory that he could not retrieve.

***

_ “They all love you so dearly, you know that,” the Second said to the First. _

_ The First smiled. “As I love them. How could I not?” His smile softened, turning unbearably tender. “You can draw closer to them, you know. Some love you already. The rest would, if you let them in.” _

_ “They look at me and see their deaths.” _

_ “They look at you, and see comfort in death. Death comes for all, but the gift you bring – to be known, and loved, and remembered – that is something unequalled. _

_ “They are marvels,” the Second breathed, shyly, “this Cybertronian race of yours.” _

_ “Of ours,” said the First. _

***

The mech had finished speaking. Light was streaming from his optics, and from Censere’s, he realised as he lifted a hand to his cheek.

“Are they all on your list?” the mech asked. Pleading.

“They are.”

The survivor closed his optics and let out a short, soft ventilation. “Good. They deserve to be remembered. And it – it makes me easier to think that they’ll be memorialised by someone who loves them, as I do.”

Censere drew back, a sharp pain sinking into his spark.

“Because you do love them.” The mech opened his optics and peered into Censere’s face. “You watch us all, so tenderly and for so long, and you make sure that no one dies unremembered. You are a great comfort, you know. To all of us.”

“I...” Censere stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to deny it, but he realised he didn’t want to. Not with this mech’s optics, warm and forgiving, gazing into his. And in another moment, he’d realised he  _ couldn’t  _ deny it. Why else had he followed these people for so many aeons? He could have left long ago, made himself a different home among distant stars, but for the fact that he…

He blurted out, “I wish you would stop being so cruel to each other.” It wasn’t what he’d meant to say. Even the saying burned a little, like needles in the back of his throat.

Those blue optics simply took this in, without judgement. “So do I.”

All the longing, all the pull towards these fascinating people who burned so bright for so little time, came rushing back, and Censere did something he could not remember doing before in a long, long life.

He opened his arms.

The mech embraced him, and Censere pulled him into the shelter of his star-cloak, wrapping them both against a desert night that had turned unforgivingly cold as the flames of the  ship burnt out. For a long time, Censere lay in the other’s arms and  _ ached _ .

“What’s your name?” he asked once, just before dawn.

“Rung.”

“Rung.” Censere shivered a little, anticipating the day he would have to enrol that name on his list, hoping it would not come for a long time yet. Rung held him tighter in response, which seemed to soothe them both. “I will not forget your friends. And I will not forget you.”

***

_ Of course, the second promise was not to be kept. The Second forgot the First once more, because that was the bargain that had been struck long ago, the price the First had paid. _

_ At least, his conscious memory forgot him. But within the Second’s spark, there was the beginning of a shift that did not cease when the name of the mech he’d met faded from his mind – something that had been furled tight for countless aeons starting to unfold. And years later, when he met an insatiably curious mech who would not leave his mysteries alone, the Second did what he once might not have done: he spoke to Nightbeat, and he let another see into the silent world he had constructed for himself. _

_ And when he began, at last, to reach out – to save these strange, bright beings instead of simply marking their passing – it was at once abrupt and expected; the catalyst came all at once, but the seed had been planted in the glow of a burning wreck, on a desolate planet, long ago. _

**Author's Note:**

> “They say every atom in our bodies was once a part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving, maybe I’m going home.”  
\- Vincent Freeman
> 
> “Without love, there is no meaning.”  
– Ratchet of Vaporex


End file.
